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Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Visa Buys Virtual Goods Monetization Platform PlaySpan For $190 Million In Cash | TechC... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...ayspan-for-190-million-in-cash

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • PlaySpan, a virtual goods monetization platform, has been acquired by Visa. According to the release, Visa will pay $190 million in cash for the company, plus additional payouts for performance milestones. The deal comes nearly a year after Visa spent a whopping $2 billion on e-payment company CyberSource. Visa says that the acquisition of PlaySpan complements the CyberSource deal and will extend the company’s presence in digital and mobile commerce.
  • This is a big exit for PlaySpan, which has raised a total of $46 million in funding since its launch four years ago. PlaySpan has been growing like a weed, striking partnerships with a number of social network, gaming and media companies, including Viacom, Disney, Facebook, Ubisoft, and Sanrio.
  • PlaySpan’s flagship product UltimatePay is a ‘Monetization as a Service’ platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user’s location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience. Currently, PlaySpan powers virtual goods marketplaces across 1,000 video games, virtual world publishers and social networks.
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  • The company also recently launched a mobile version of UltimatePay, which gives smartphone developers a way to deliver a one-click payment experience to mobile gamers, and provide a comprehensive payments offering. The mobile focused platform allows players to view their balance and transaction history, while allowing them to purchase items in-app without ever having to leave the game
  • As virtual goods becomes a booming business, PlaySpan has reaped the benefits of technology and media companies looking to incorporate virtual goods into their platforms.
  • Visa says that ecommerce sales, which reached an estimated $948 billion, are a big growth area for the company. Approximately 45 percent of U.S. online spending takes place on Visa’s network today and for Visa’s fiscal first quarter 2011, the company reported 25 percent year-over-year growth in ecommerce payment volumes globally. Visa is going to use PlaySpan to capitalize on the growing digital goods market, which generated an estimated $25 billion in consumer spending globally in 2010 and is expected to reach $280 billion by 20143.
  • The acquisition is even more impressive when you conside that the company was founded by 12-year-old, Arjun Mehta, in 2006. PlaySpan is actually run by the teenager’s father, CEO and co-founder Karl Mehta.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Intuit's GoPayment Cuts Transaction Fees, Pricing Now More In Line With Square | TechCr... - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...g-now-more-in-line-with-square

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Inuit’s GoPayment reader, which competes directly with Square, is about to become more attractive to small businesses. The company has made the decision dropped the transaction fee ($0.15 per transaction) for both new and existing customers for Visa, MasterCard and Discover cards, both swiped and key-entered as well as qualified and non-qualified transactions. The move will go into effect on Monday.
  • Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones. So now, businesses using the mobile payments reader will only pay a flat 2.7 percent fee of a transaction for any swiped cards. Intuit will charge 3.7 percent for both key entered and non-qualified transactions.
  • This is surely a competitive move against Square, which also dropped its transaction fee (which was $0.15) recently in favor of a flat 2.75 percent fee for all transactions. One important fact to note—Intuit will still charge the transaction fee for transactions using American Express but this is something the company is working on negotiating. Square does not charge a fees for transactions on Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express.
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  • For higher credit card processing volume (recommended for more than a $1,000 per month), Intuit is continuing to charge a $12.95 monthly fee but has dropped the set transaction charge of $0.30. The per transaction percentage remains at 1.7 percent for cards swiped; and 2.7 percent for key entered.
  • Mobile payments is a competitive space and it’s hard not to notice some of the attention Square has been getting from both Visa and Apple. Because of this, companies like Intuit have to up the ante to remain competitive and attract businesses. For example, Intuit recently extended the offer of a free version of its GoPayment reader indefinitely. Square’s readers have been free for some time now.
  • Chris Hylen, VP and general manager of Intuit Payment Solutions said this explaining this change in pricing: We started simplifying GoPayment pricing back in January when we eliminated the monthly fee. Now we’re removing transaction fees. As we continue to evaluate the market and talk with customers, we believe that making our pricing even more affordable is the best way to give more people an easy way to process credit cards on their mobile devices.
  • While Square is growing fast, as more and more businesses are looking for innovative, inexpensive and painless ways to accept credit cards, Intuit’s reader does offer a compelling product. The company reports that it has seen a nearly 700% increase in the number of people signing up for GoPayment each week compared to the beginning of the year (driven in large part its free swiper offering). Intuit declined to reveal exactly how many users are signing up per day vs. a year ago.
  • And GoPayment users are  processing in excess of $15 million a week using GoPayment and related services. These services also include payments from the Web and through QuickBooks using a GoPayment merchant account, so it’s unclear how much of that $15 million is coming through the readers themselves. Intuit says GoPayment users have processed more than $3 million in a single day over the past month as well.
  • For basis of comparison, Square just revealed that it is processing $2 million in transactions per day and $66 million for the first quarter, but COO Keith Rabois says forecasts that this number will triple in Q2.
  • The other competitor in the space, VeriFone, has yet to eliminate the set transaction fees ($0.17) associated with its payment product. But with pressure from both Square and Intuit, that may change soon.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

NetSecure Kudos Payments announced for Canada, is the half-circle to Square -- Engadget - 0 views

www.engadget.com/...d-for-canada-is-the-half-circl

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Canada may be moving to polymer-based currency, but mobile payment services like Square -- which cater to classic plastic -- haven't yet taken time to trek to the Great White North. NetSecure is looking to offer similar convenience to the region with its new Kudos Payments service, which just so happens to ship with a shockingly curvy swiping dongle. Similar to Square, it creates a secure 'point of sale' without a hard-wired transaction terminal, and charges a slightly higher 2.9-percent fee to users' accounts for each exchange. Kudos has iOS, Android, and Blackberry apps to tap into the functionality and, even a version for Mac and PC -- in other words, you and yours should be suitably covered. Any roving entrepreneurs who are interested in the service will be able to snag the $49.99 kit free of charge from the company's website for a "limited time," which may or may not expire before Google decides to open its own Wallet a few miles kilometers north
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Intuit GoPayment Now Allows Merchants To Receive Money On A Prepaid Visa Card | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...e-money-on-a-prepaid-visa-card

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Intuit has made an interesting move today with its mobile credit card reader GoPayment reader. Intuit is allowing merchants to keep and receive funds on a prepaid credit card as opposed to depositing the amount in a bank account
  • Launched two years ago, GoPayment offers a complimentary app and credit card reader to allow small businesses to conduct charges via their smartphones. GoPayment, which competes directly with Square, is available for iOS, Android and Blackberry phones and the card reader simply plugs into the audio jack of a phone or tablet. The credit card data is also encrypted, (and never stored on the phone).
  • Similar to Square, the GoPayment mobile payment app is free and the basic service has no monthly, transaction or cancellation fees, and offers a 2.7 percent rate for swiped transactions. Intuit and Square actually both eliminated the per transaction fee.
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  • With the Intuit GoPayment Prepaid Visa Card, merchants and retailers can have the funds they collect with GoPayment deposited into their GoPayment Card account. They can then use the card to make payments online, in stores and withdraw cash at ATMs everywhere Visa debit cards are accepted.
  • So who does this arrangement work for? For smaller businesses or individuals who don’t have a business bank account and still want to conveniently separate the money they make with GoPayment from their personal finances, this could be a good option. Using the prepaid card can also help merchants start accepting payments quickly as there is no bank account required to sign up. Those who prefer using a business or personal bank account can still choose to have their funds deposited into their bank account. And for the millions of U.S. consumers who are “unbanked,” a prepaid Visa card allows them to accept payments for a business without a bank account.
  • This makes GoPayment especially friendly for fledgling entrepreneurs or businesses who want to accept payments but don’t have a business bank account.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Isis selects Gemalto to manage mobile payments for NFC wallet - Tech News and Analysis - 0 views

gigaom.com/...mobile-payments-for-nfc-wallet

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Isis, the near field communication mobile wallet venture from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, took another step forward with the announcement that it has selected SIM card maker and digital security specialist Gemalto as its trusted service manager (TSM) for the wallet. The deal means Gemalto will manage the secure element on Isis phones, overseeing the transfer of payment credentials from banks and payment services to the Isis wallet application on phones.
  • Gemalto will essentially hold the payment keys for Isis, controlling which service providers are able to tap Isis for contactless payments. It won’t participate in the actual transactions but will enable a host of applications, from payments to coupons and loyalty cards.
  • The deal is an important step for Isis, which is moving ahead toward a launch in the first half of 2012 in Salt Lake City and Austin before a larger nationwide roll out. The joint venture will compete with Google Wallet, which launched in September with partners Sprint, MasterCard and Citibank and First Data as its trusted service manager.
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  • Gemalto is becoming a major player in the emerging market for TSMs. It has signed a deal to become the TSM for Deutsche Telekom and also Singapore’s nation-wide NFC system. It has also secured TSM deals with Barclaycard and Orange. Sebastian Cano, SVP Telecommucation for Gemalto, said the company has 45 NFC projects underway but the Isis deal would be the largest.
  • “The secure element will not be an open asset to allow people to write content to it or it will lose the first portion of it birth name,” said Hughes. “Any suggestion that a secure element is an SDK that sits on top of an open OS is a fanciful argument.”
  • I asked Ryan Hughes, the CMO of Isis, about the situation and he declined to comment on the Verizon situation. But he said that the secure element must be managed by a TSM and the owner of the device, which will be the carriers in the case of Isis. Creating a completely open situation where any company or developer can access the secure element would not be safe or practical, he said.
  • The deal is interesting because it follows word last week that Google Wallet has not been enabled to run on the Galaxy Nexus, Google’s flagship Android device which is expected to go on sale soon with Verizon. Verizon said it has not blocked the NFC application but is working on commercial talks with Google, which many have interpreted as Verizon holding back the wallet until its own Isis payment tool is available.
  • That suggests to me that we shouldn’t expect to see Google Wallet instantly enabled on Isis phones. It can still happen eventually and Verizon makes it sound like it’s just a matter of working things out with Google. But each Isis carrier will be able to decide what service provider gets access to their secure element, and it looks like it will not be a free-for-all. That makes sense on some level for security reasons but my hope is that ultimately, Isis members won’t find reasons to keep Google Wallet or other competing applications off their phones for too long. The NFC wallet market is just emerging and it will be good to have competition and options for consumers.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Does Facebook hold the future of mobile payments in its hands? - Mobile Commerce Daily ... - 0 views

www.mobilecommercedaily.com/...f-mobile-payments-in-its-hands

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • With more than 200 million mobile users, Facebook and its currency platform Credits is poised to be the future of how we pay for both virtual and physical goods.
  • Right now there are various different technologies and start-ups actively looking at ways to penetrate the mobile payments market. Each company has taken a different approach, from digital bar codes to near field communication (NFC).
  • Introduced in May of 2009, Facebook Credits was originally designed as a virtual currency to allow people to make purchases within games and non-gaming applications on the Facebook platform.
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  • Much like Apple with iTunes, Facebook takes a 30 percent cut on every dollar spent through the Credits platform.
  • Today users can buy Credits with 15 currencies, including U.S. dollars, Euros, the British Pound and the Venezuelan Bolivar.
  • It is important to first highlight, that for any mobile payments system to work, consumers will need to open some form of application to allow users to connect the phone to complete the payment. 
  • To date, Facebook sees over 200 million unique users accessing the social network through a mobile devices each month.
  • Almost all of the major brands who would adopt mobile payments in the beginning (i.e. Best Buy, Gap, Target) have invested heavily into growing a Facebook presence. It is this ability to connect to users and their social graph through a Facebook payment option that makes Credits and mobile payments an attractive model.
  • From this point, it is Facebook’s network that makes its payment option so attractive. As I scan my phone to finalize my purchase, I am presented with the option to share this purchase with my friends. Selecting yes, opens up an additional discount for my friends and I. From there my friends have the option to use the promotion through Best Buy’s ecommerce page or on location.
  • For now, Facebook prefers to play down talk of its broader ambitions for Credits. The 30 percent tax Facebook imposes on those who accept Credits might be too high to allow for the regular sale physical goods and services.
  • Other big players include PayPal who has more than 81 million active registered accounts and 210 million accounts, in 190 markets and it supported 24 currencies.
  • One factor that is definite is the speed at which small business will adapt mobile transactions.
  • Probably an even bigger player is Apple and its 100 million iTunes users. The iPhone is set to be the main phone to drive mobile payments, even if other phones offer these features. But one thing is for sure: the mobile (social) payments market will be fragmented for the first few years and Facebook is easily in the position to come out victorious.
  • While analysts feel 2011 is the year for mobile payments, there is still uncertainty of how quickly consumers will move their wallet to a digital format or what platform they will use. 
  • Google, with its Google Checkout and Android phones is also set to be a big player. With NFC technology being implemented on all future Google phones, we expect a mobile payment app preloaded on these phones. 
  • Third-party companies such as Bling Nation and Square to name a few win over merchants by cutting the transaction process fee by as much as 50 percent. With consumers swiping their debits cards more so than ever, this is a huge savings for any company.
  • Additionally, the three major U.S wireless carriers, Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile partnered with Discover Card to form a mobile payment company called “Isis,” a venture to provide mobile payment carrier billing solution for payments.
  • The closet form of mobile payments in the U.S. that can be utilized nationally is the Starbucks digital gift card. 
  • While this option only applies to Starbucks stores, consumers can now makes purchases by scanning their phones.
  • The biggest challenge, currently keeping mobile payments from going mainstream is technology adoption. 
  • Not only do consumers need to carry a phone that has the correct technology, retailers also need to implement technology that connects with the phone.
  • Other challenges that could cause slow growth are the number of companies attempting to break into the space. 
  • From small start-ups to large tech companies such as Google and Apple, many consumers could be slow to adopt as they wait it out and see which platform becomes widely adopted.
  • To truly accelerate growth, we believe a large company needs to step up and look at the opportunity as a way to break into the $6.2 trillion retail market by covering the costs of technology adoption.
  • One player who is seen to have this ability is Apple. 
  • As the largest tech company in the world, rumors have come up, that Apple will implement NFC technology into the next generation iPhone 5 and with 100 million users already connected through iTunes, giving away the retail technology to scan mobile payments could be a quick way to gain accelerated usage.
  • Though it cannot be applied to all of your purchases, Starbucks seems to be the furthest along, allowing customers to purchase digital gift cards that can be scanned at all Starbuck locations nationwide.
  • To help accelerate growth, implementing a rewards program will draw more consumers to try the new payment platform.  This option to collect and track rewards is one of the key features that have helped Starbucks see quicker adoption.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

MasterCard + Intel: The Confluence of Tech and Payments Industries [14Nov11] - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...fluence_of_tech_and_paymen.php

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • MasterCard, the longtime credit card and payments processor, wants to reposition itself as a technology company. Throughout the latter half of 2011, it has been pushing hard on the technosphere to make sure that journalists and bloggers know the company is doing some cool stuff around payments research and the cutting edge of technology, like NFC, audio signals and QR codes that can lead to purchases through smartphones.
  • It now comes as no surprise that MasterCard has announced a partnership with Intel on a multi-year strategic partnership that is intended to enhance the security and payment experience for digital commerce. These are two titans in the tech and financial industries and shows one of the first steps of these two industries merging in the future.
  • Making A Dent In The 85%
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  • According to the joint press release, the initial focus of the MasterCard and Intel partnership will be on MasterCard's PayPass payments hardware and Intel's Identity Protection Technology (IPT). The idea will be to make a faster, more secure transaction with a just a click or a tap of a card or smartphone through the NFC capabilities of PayPass.
  • There are larger currents in motion here than just creating better transactions hardware. According to MasterCard, 85% of transactions are still done in cash. The company's goal is to make a dent in that number. Even a half a percentage point change towards digital purchases could mean hundreds of millions of extra dollars flowing towards the payment processing industry. This is why MasterCard is repositioning itself not just as a payments firm, but as a technology company.
  • Convergence Of Tech & Payments
  • In 2011 there have been a multitude of partnerships made between tech and financial companies. A lot of the movement has to do with the emerging model of mobile payments, especially into the physical (not Web-based) world. The biggest one is probably the Google Wallet initiative, that has a wide group of companies in its early rolls (and more to come), including Google, Citi, MasterCard, Sprint and various NFC makers. There is also the Isis project that brings the other three carriers, AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to bear with NFC capabilities. Last week American Express announced a $100 million fund to help fund e-commerce projects. While mobile will be a huge focus for this convergence between tech and financial, it is not the only push.
  • Square is pushing itself into the mainstream with deals with Wal-Mart, the carriers and Apple while Intuit has made partnerships with both Verizon and AT&T with an eye towards pushing its GoPayment dongle and QuickBooks infrastructure at small businesses. PayPal wants to be two things at once, both a technology leader and a payments company and has been making a lot of horizontal movements in the sector as well.
  • This is not just about the financial industry moving towards technology, the way MasterCard is trying to do it. The technology industry is equally as fervent to moves towards payments. Jack Dorsey, one the founders of Twitter, is probably the best example of this. He saw earlier than most that mobile was changing the entire tech industry and that payments would be a huge part of that. Hence, he started Square, one of the first pillars of the bridge that is being built between the two industries.
  • Both Apple and Google have been making pushes into payments. Apple has hundreds of millions of credit cards on file to support its iTunes model where as Google Checkouts has been positioned to be the de facto purchasing solution for Android apps.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Square Now Being Used For Mobile Payments At Political Fundraisers | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...ments-at-political-fundraisers

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - Cached
  • Jack Dorsey’s Square was unveiled last December as an innovative way to let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone.
  • Square is ideal for taking money at political fundraisers for several reasons.
  • A local flower cart in San Francisco is using Square to take payments from customers. Denim, a jeans store in New York is using Square to take payments from shoppers. We even used Square at this year’s Crunchies to raise money for the UCSF Foundation.
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  • Here’s how Square works: A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection. The device is compatible with both the iPhone and Android. It’s similar in some ways to PayPal, but anyone can now accept physical credit card payments, too. With no contracts or monthly fees. People are sent receipts by text and email. If you haven’t seen Square in action, check out this video.
  • And now, a new use case has popped up for Square: political fundraising.
  • Square is currently being used in two campaigns. Silicon Valley VC Josh Becker, who is running for state assembly in California’s 21st district, has been using Square at fundraising events. And lawyer Reshma Saujani, who is running for Congress in New York’s 14th district, is using Square at campaign fundraising events, including at an event in San Francisco on Friday.
  • Since then, Square, which has been in limited beta, has been used in a variety of use cases. E.g. philanthopic organization charity:water recently used Square at the SXSW festival to collect donations.
  • Currently, if you want to donate money at a fundraising event, you often have to fill out a form and hand over a check or cash at the event. If you don’t have your checkbook or cash handy (which, many of us don’t), credit cards are the only option. You can write down your credit card number and info for fundraisers to charge at a later date, but you have to trust that the fundraiser keeps track of that information and paper.
  • With Square, there is both a convenience added for both the payee and fundraiser. The donation is instantly processed, and Square will send the receipt via SMS or email to the payee. Of course, political contributions and donations are a little more complicated because of the reporting requirements associated with donations.
  • For many types of donations, you need to take the donator’s name, occupation, address, and other information. Currently Square doesn’t allow users to input all of this information but Dorsey says that they are releasing Square’s API to allow fundraisers to build additional applications on top of Square, where they could input all of the necessary data. Once this is enabled, Square will allows fundraisers to eliminate paper collection and payments all together.
  • Dorsey says he’s already getting significant interest from politicians and political candidates across the country, but because Square is in limited beta, is being selective about how the service is distributed. Dorsey expects Square to be open to the public sometime in the next few months.
  • Valued at $40 million even before launch, Square is off to an impressive start. And technology’s most notable investors and leaders seem to think so as well.
  • Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, investor Ron Conway, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Digg creator Kevin Rose, investor Esther Dyson and a host of others have invested in Square. The company also raised funding from Khosla Ventures.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Despite Expanded AmEx Deal, Foursquare Is Still A Revenue-Free Zone | TechCrunch - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...x-foursquare-revenue-free-zone

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 06 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Foursquare is expanding its relationship with American Express to provide local deals to people who sync their cards to their Foursquare accounts. AmEx did a trial at SXSW, and that went well enough that it is rolling out the deals more broadly.
  • The discounts, such as $20 off a $50 purchase at Sports Authority, are automatically applied to your AmEx account when you check in via Foursquare to a participating merchant before a purchase. Everyone in local commerce is trying to figure out how to close the loop between deals and payments. Google thinks NFC chips in Android phones will be the answer in the form of a Google Wallet. Whereas Groupon is trying out instant mobile deals with Groupon Now. By tying its specials to a credit card, Foursquare is closing the payment loop with something everyone already carries around in their wallets.
  • Once companies can tie mobile ads or deals to payments, they will be able to measure directly the sales generated by these mobile promotions. And one day that could potentially be a huge new business. But for now, it’s making absolutely zilch for Foursquare, which remains a revenue-free zone. As the New York Times reports: Foursquare will not be receiving any revenue from the American Express deal
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  • Foursquare wants to make sure it gets the product experience right for both merchants and users before turning on revenue, but it can’t wait too long, especially if it wants to justify that billion-dollar valuation in its next round of funding. The race is on to create as many great local deals as possible to present to mobile consumers. And its biggest competitor is Groupon Now.
  • While Groupon is already the largest daily deal company in the world, it wants to move from deals people sign up for in advance through massive email marketing campaigns to instant deals they find on their mobile phones. The company is testing its own mobile app called Groupon Now in a few cities like Chicago and New York. Groupon Now deals are different than regular Groupon deals in that consumers don’t have to wait a day to redeem them. They are available instantly and you can find them on your mobile phone when you are nearby a merchant offering one of these deals.
  • A Groupon Now deal is directly equivalent to a Foursquare special powered by AmEx in that it is instantly redeemable and the payment can be linked to the offer. Closing this loop is the Holy Grail of digital local commerce. But closing that loop is not enough.
  • Foursquare simply doesn’t have the salesforce to craft the same kind of deals that Groupon can. Groupon’s deals tend to be more alluring with deeper discounts. AmEx is helping Foursquare here by sourcing many of these deals itself through its own salesforce and existing relationships with local and national merchants, but it also gets to keep all the revenue. At least for now.
  • Foursquare is bringing the users (and some of the deals), and is betting that eventually that will be worth something. It’s all about who can create a market of users and deals faster. Foursquare’s approach is to build up its users first—now it’s got 10 million—and then hope the deals trickle up organically or through partnerships. Groupon is almost taking the opposite approach, trying to build up an inventory of great mobile deals first and then hoping that the consumers will come. The thing is that it takes both sides to make a market.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Branson's Next Mobile Act: An Investment In Mobile Payments Startup Square | paidConten... - 0 views

paidcontent.org/...-mobile-payments-startup-squar

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Richard Branson is no stranger to investing in mobile media: among his more notable moves have been establishing Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) years ago, and more recently moving into iPad publishing with Project magazine. Today comes news of his latest foray into the wireless world: an investment in the mobile payments startup Square.
  • Square raised $100 million at the end of June in a round led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. At the time, that valued the company at $1 billion.
  • Square built a business initially on an iPhone-based mobile payments service that is now avaialbe for both iOS and Android devices. It provides a square-shaped dongle to merchants, who can plug the device into a phone to make instant card transactions. Some 800,000 merchants in the U.S. are now using the dongles, and there are around $2 billion in payments processed annually through the platform. At the standard 2.75 percent commission that Square charges merchants, that works out to annuals revenues of $55 million from those transactions going to Square.
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  • Last week, the company upgraded its payment app, Card Case, which now uses geofencing technology built into smartphones to let a user make purchases without even presenting the device. About 20,000 merchants have signed up to work with the Card Case app to date.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Starbucks iPhone app now supports mobile payments! | MobileSyrup.com [08Nov11] - 0 views

mobilesyrup.com/...p-now-supports-mobile-payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • It’s been a request by Starbucks aficionados for a long time and the day has arrived! Today, November 8th, 2011, marks the day that Starbucks updated their iPhone app to accept mobile payments in Canada. Version 2.1 is now available to download and brings iOS5 support and the ability to pay via your iPhone. All you have to do to get started is have a registered Starbucks card with money loaded in, upon cashing out the barista will scan the barcode that’s on your iPhone and your balance will be reduced. Good news for BlackBerry and Android users as mobile payments will be coming to you “in the coming months”.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Add NFC to your smartphone - The Red Ferret Journal [08Nov11] - 0 views

www.redferret.net/?p=29691

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 08 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The slow rise of NFC (near field communication) has given rise to the idea that you can pay for purchases by doing little more than getting out your phone and tapping it at checkout. While the technology is growing, a surprising number of phones lack this feature. Thankfully there are companies out there who see this issue, and are working to correct it by offering accessories that will add NFC to your smartphone.
  • The first is called SDpass. This product has launched in China and works with KJava and Android devices with a built-in microSD slot. The microSD connection fits in the available slot, and is attached to a small antenna, which receives the signal. This is currently on sale for around $25, and features 2GB of storage on the SD card.
  • Another option that will soon be on the market is an NFC-enabled iPhone case being developed in Taiwan. It isn’t much larger than an ordinary case, with most of the bulk on the bottom, due to the connector. Since the dock connector is blocked, they have added a USB port, which will allow you to charge and sync the phone. It is currently looking to get approval from local regulators before it can be used on the market. When it receives approval, it should sell for around $51. Unfortunately there is no word on when (or if) either of these will come to the US.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Starbucks Augmented Reality App Animates Holiday Cups [08Nov11] - 0 views

mashable.com/...starbucks-ar-app

4AR augmented-reality application branding

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 09 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Starbucks is launching its first major augmented reality app this holiday season that will let customers animate their coffee cups with their smartphones.
  • Starbucks Cup Magic launches for iPhone and Android devices in the U.S. next Tuesday. (In Canada, just the iPhone version will launch.) As demonstrated in the video above, the app works by pointing your phone’s camera at the company’s red holiday season coffee cups and 47 additional objects, such as bags of coffee, on display at Starbucks retail locations.
  • Doing so will produce animations involving five characters — an ice skater, a squirrel, a boy and a dog sledding and a fox — on your screen. You can also interact with the characters. For instance, if you tap the boy on the sled he does a somersault. Those who activate all five characters can qualify to win an as-yet-unnamed prize.
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  • The app also includes traditional and social sharing capabilities. You can the send ecards as well as holiday offers from Starbucks, among other things.
  • The object, says Alexandra Wheeler, vp-global digital marketing for Starbucks, is to “surprise and delight” customers during the holiday season.
  • Although Starbucks experimented with an AR app years ago in an ad, Wheeler says this is the first major AR push by the company. The effort follows some other recent AR programs from marketers including an app from Nivea featuring Rihanna and an Amazon app that lets you point your phone at objects and then buy them.
  • Cup Magic, created by Blast Radius, caps off a year of successful mobile implementations by Starbucks. The brand launched a mobile payment app in January that has been used in more than 20 million transactions and a QR code program designed, like Starbucks Cup Magic, to enhance the in-store brand experience.
Dan R.D.

New Amazon iPhone App Blends Augmented Reality With eCommerce [03Nov11] - 0 views

mashable.com/...amazon-augmented-reality-app

4AR

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  • Amazon’s use of the iPhone camera to recognize and classify objects was preceded by Google, which released Google Goggles, a similar technology, for Android in December 2009 and for the iPhone last October.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

German Rail System to Get Mobile Payments This Year [26Aug11] - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...t_mobile_payments_this_yea.php

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 10 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Come November, the world's second largest mass transit company will let its riders pay for trips by waving their cell phones at the terminal. The Deutsche Bahn, Germany's main railway operator, began implementing its Touch&Travel mobile payments system in 2008 and expects it to be ready within two months.
  • The system will rely on near field communications (NFC) chips contained in customers' mobile phones to handle the payment transactions for each trip. Alternatively, riders can pay with their phones by scanning a QR code at the beginning and end point of their ride.
  • Touch&Travel mobile apps are available for iPhone and Android-based smart phones. "In addition to using NFC or barcodes to provide location information, smartphone apps can use GPS or the user can type in a location ID number," writes NFC World. Riders will be billed for their transit usage at the end of each month.
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  • Contact-less payments are just one of the many uses for NFC, which is one of the most-talked-about technologies of the last year. Some other use cases include exchanging contact information, mobile gaming and unlocking doors, to name a few. Still, mobile payments are perhaps the most anticipated of its future uses, as everybody from banks and credit card companies to Google and smaller tech startups have been preparing solutions in this space.
  • New York City's transit system started its own pilot program for mobile payments last year, which lets riders pay for trips with their iPhones. Since the iPhone does not yet support NFC natively, the devices need to be housed in a special casing in order to work with New York's subway, rail, bus and taxi systems.
Dan R.D.

Amazon takes small loss on Kindle Fire - study - MarketWatch - 0 views

www.marketwatch.com/...n-kindle-fire-study-2011-11-18

1UE_NS tablets

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  • Shares of Amazon were down about 1% $202.52 by mid-morning Friday. The stock is up about 13% for the year to date. The Kindle Fire is estimated to cost a total of $201.70 to build each unit, a number that includes a bill of materials — or BOM — of $185.60, with another $16.10 in manufacturing costs for each unit, iSuppli estimates. The tear-down estimate does not include cost figures for software, licensing or royalties that Amazon may pay on the device.
  • Amazon began shipping the Kindle Fire on Monday, after first unveiling the device in late September. The tablet costs $199 — about 60% less than the cheapest iPad from Apple Inc. /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL -0.16% , which currently dominates the tablet market. Analysts expect the Kindle Fire to make the largest dent in the tablet market next to the iPad, after other devices using Google’s /quotes/zigman/93888/quotes/nls/goog GOOG -0.89%  Android operating system have largely failed to generate strong sales. The low price of the device, along with Amazon’s large library of books and other digital content, are expected to contribute to the appeal of the Kindle Fire. But Amazon does not break out data on its device sales.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Walgreens Launches Scannable Mobile Coupons Today | TechCrunch [25Nov11] - 0 views

techcrunch.com/...scannable-mobile-coupons-today

2QR_MT mobile coupons

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 25 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Starting today, on the retail shopping holiday known as Black Friday here in the U.S., Walgreens will begin rolling out its new scannable mobile coupons which work at its over 7,700 stores nationwide. The coupons are being made available in the Walgreens mobile applications and to use them, you simply show your phone at checkout where it will be scanned by the cashier.
  • You’ll find the coupons in a special section within the mobile application where you’re also able to sign up for SMS-based alerts.
  • Coupons will only be offered one at a time every two to three days, and will range in value from $0.50 to $5.00. The discounts will be targeted towards a wide variety of products, including beauty items, gifts, consumables and everyday essentials, like diapers.
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  • Shoppers can also use the mobile app to view the weekly ad and sales, shop directly from their phone, browse products, check availability, scan barcodes, manage prescriptions and receive text alerts about Walgreens’ offers and exclusive deals.
  • Walgreens says the coupons will be available through December 24th, but details regarding its post-holiday mobile couponing plans are not yet available.
  • The Deerfield, Ill.-based company has 7,786 locations across all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, making this initiative one of the largest retail mobile couponing programs in the country.
  • The Walgreens mobile app is available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Orange and Barclaycard launch smartphone payment service - IT News from V3.co.uk [20May11] - 0 views

www.v3.co.uk/...nch-smartphone-payment-service

3BT_NFC mobile payments

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  • Orange and Barclaycard have launched the UK's first contactless payment service allowing customers to pay for purchases using a smartphone.
  • Orange Quick Tap allows payments of up to £15 in over 50,000 outlets around the country, including Pret A Manger, McDonald's and Subway.
  • Customers have to purchase a Samsung Tocco Lite smartphone to use the service, which is available for £55 on pay-as-you-go or free on a £10 per month, two-year contract.
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  • Customers also need an Orange credit card, Barclaycard or Barclays debit card to transfer money onto the Quick Tap app.
  • Barclaycard is touting the system as highly secure, highlighting the fact that users can opt to input a PIN every time they make a payment.
  • Using mobile phones to make payments is a natural extension of the smartphone, according to Pippa Dunn, vice president at Orange.
  • "We no longer use our mobile phones simply for talking and texting. Apps, cameras and music players allow us to use them for a lot more," she said.
  • "Orange Quick Tap is the first of its kind, a service that allows you to pay for everyday items just by tapping your phone wherever you see the contactless payment symbol. It's going to start a revolution in the way we pay for things on the high street."
  • Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner, told V3.co.uk that this will be the first of many services as near-field communication (NFC) technology becomes a common feature on Android, BlackBerry and possibly Apple devices.
  • "[However], a little more work needs to be done on the service side as there are different kinds NFC approaches being used by the providers," she said.
  • There are currently 12.9 million contactless cardholders in the UK, and Barclaycard expects the new service to drive adoption.
  • O2 is gearing up to introduce NFC services during 2011, including a wallet application and direct-to-bill and peer-to-peer payment facilities.
  • Analyst firm Juniper Research predicted that NFC will be built into one in five smartphones by 2014 as mobile payment and interactive promotions take off.
  • Over 23 million NFC-capable smartphones are expected to be in circulation by the end of 2011, according to Juniper.
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

Like Dwolla, SCVNGR is Building Local Mobile Payments Groundswell With LevelUp [24Nov11] - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...ilding_local_mobile_paymen.php

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 25 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • Location-based social game mechanics are not inherently transactional. That is where the company's newest product, LevelUp comes into play. Take merchant offers, location, game mechanics and make then transactional and you have an idea what LevelUp is trying to do in the mobile payments space.
  • LevelUp is the path and it dives deep into the fundamental nature of payments, merchants and how people interact with money.
  • How Does LevelUp Work?
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  • Levelup is a mobile payments system at its core. It currently has 100,000 users across four cities (Boston, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco) with 600 merchants signed up.
  • The basic payment structure is that LevelUp provides the merchants with an Android smartphone with a QR code reader and consumers with the LevelUp app that has a personalized QR code that effectively acts as the interface to their wallet
  • Users tie their debit/credit cards to the QR code in LevelUp's app. The security behind that is what could be considered a triple-blind token system. No actual payment information is being stored on the device (unlike the Google Wallet, for instance) and there are three steps from the phone to the bank to obfuscate where the payment is actually coming from.
  • Then there are the deals and game mechanics. When merchants sign up, they are prompted to give buyers a credit.
  • The more times that people pay with LevelUp, the more opportunities for credit to be accumulated (hence, the notion of leveling up to a new offer).
  • About 45% of users return to pay full price at the merchant and users on average use LevelUp about twice per week. The location system comes in by seeing on a map in the app what merchants close to you are using the service and what kind of deals they have.
  • "With LevelUp being transactional, we wanted to make it as fundamentally simple as humanely possible," Priebatsch said. "Frankly you should never have to do anything other than just pay with it and good things should happen to you and that should make you want to keep using it."
  • LevelUp has a certain type of groundswell that other local mobile payments options do not. In that way, LevelUp's closest kindred spirit is more likely to be Dwolla than it is something like Square or Google Wallet
  • There has been talk of SCVNGR being acquired but it is more likely that the company will eventually make partnerships with other ground-swell mobile payments companies like Dwolla.
  • What LevelUp and Dwolla have done is created a local ecosystem of merchants willing to use mobile payments in their communities. This is the bottom-up approach and, as of yet, is proving to be as effective than the top-down approach taken by companies like Google and PayPal.
  • What are the pain points for mobile payments? For the consumer, it is having the app and the ability to tie it to a payments process. LevelUp cuts down on the pain points by having the ability to tie the wallet to a debit/credit card through its triple-blind token system and using QR codes.
  • According to Priebatsch, QR codes are not necessary to the process. Any interface (like NFC) will do but the QR code is working for now and LevelUp can work with any device that can project a black and white image
  • This is where Priebatsch starts to get deep into the nature of payments and the notion that money is nothing but a form of information that transfers from one point to another. Priebatsch's grand plan, that translates well to a five to 10 years down the road for the company, is to bring the payments process down to "interchange zero" where the cost of moving that information from Point A to Point B is next to nothing.
  • Here is the philosophy, according to Priebatsch:
  • People will eventually make the flow of money more and more efficient, and the cost of transferring information, or money as information, will eventually converge to zero. This concept is something that we describe as "interchange zero". And as money flows frictionless-ly, all sorts of great things happen around that. You get to pay less at the store because the business does not have to pay interchange on top of their prices.
  • The really fascinating thing with that, is that a new monetization model needs to be found for the payments industry because somebody needs to make the $50 billion dollars a year to actually support the whole thing. And I believe, and I have a game mechanics background, that the way that that money is going to be replaced, as the idea of me paying you to just move money back and forth goes away, the way that people are going to make money on payments is taking the information inherent in payments and applying a series of game mechanics.
  • To create a series of actions which get consumers to spend more and come back more often. And this help the business make more money off of each transaction. So the payment, as a utility, will be frictionless, and the money will flow to the company, enterprise, person, organization who can add the most value to the transaction."
Marc-Alexandre Gagnon

45 mobile operators announce support for SIM-based NFC [24Nov11] - 0 views

www.screendigest.com/...view.html

3BT_NFC mobile payments

shared by Marc-Alexandre Gagnon on 25 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • 45 mobile operators have pledged their support for subscriber identity module (SIM) based Near Field Communication (NFC) implementations in an announcement made by mobile industry trade body the GSM Association (GSMA).
  • The large existing user-base of low-cost, mid-tier, NFC-less feature phones popular in emerging markets is a prime target for this technology. However, technical difficulties have prevented the adoption of SIM-based NFC. As the SIM card slot is located behind the battery, radio signals to and from the NFC module are effectively blocked in many phones.
  • Potential applications for this technology include mobile payments, public transit access, event ticketing, secure access to buildings or vehicles, identification, and person-to-person (P2P) data sharing.
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  • The GSMA has published interoperability standards for SIM-based NFC application programming interfaces (APIs) and protocols based on the Pay-Buy-Mobile specification for secure NFC mobile payments. Such standards pave the way for the development of contactless services across a variety of devices irrespective of their operating system (OS) while providing more detailed implementation protocols for the Java and Android platforms.
  • IHS Screen Digest research indicates that the 45 operators involved in the announcement serve 50.7 per cent of the world's mobile subscriptions. Since the NFC module is embedded in the SIM card, the operators expect users to be able to use existing handsets for contactless services without the need to switch to a high-end smartphone. Users of smartphones currently lacking NFC capabilities will also benefit from this technology.
  • The 45 operators involved account for nearly 3 billion subscriptions worldwide, and include China Mobile, Vodafone Group, América Móvil, Telefónica Group, China Unicom, Axiata, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon Wireless, and AT&T.
  • There is also the issue of cost. IHS Screen Digest estimates current SIM-based NFC modules to be a hundred times more expensive than traditional SIM cards. This would deter most operators from venturing into offering SIM-based NFC as an option to customers in emerging economies until economies of scale bring the associated costs down.
  • It is unlikely that operators will allow third-party "over-the-top" services outside of their value chain. As the implementation of some contactless services (e.g. mobile payments, public transit) depends on a close collaboration between operators and local third-parties, it is expectable that contactless services deployments and uptake will vary greatly across markets.
  • IHS Screen Digest does not foresee rapid adoption of SIM-based NFC mobile payments. Users will likely become acquainted with the contactless technology by way of other use-cases, as NFC experiences in Asia and Europe suggest--most notably the Octopus transit and stored-value card in Hong Kong, and the London Oyster transit card.
  • If NFC payment and transit cards schemes prove successful in more locations, the likelihood that such services will be increasingly incorporated into mobile devices will also increase.
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